01: Map Out Your Self-publishing Adventure: Ebook Creation Tools On The Desktop
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e Indie Author Journey Mapping out your self-publishing adventure with Carla King
1
Friday, July 18, 14
EBOOK CREATION TOOLS ON THE DESKTOP
Ebook creation tools on the desktop.
This segment of Mapping Out Your Self-Publishing Journey is all about ebook creation tools on the desktop. I like to start with ebooks first because they’re so easy, and besides, a lot of the ebook creation tools can create print book formats, too. These tools can be split into two categories: desktop tools and cloud-based tools. Today we’re focusing on desktop tools. Let’s explore!
Friday, July 18, 14
What you’ll learn.
A carpenter wouldn’t hammer with a wrench, or saw a board with a nail file. Yet writers often do not use the right tools for the job. It’s really not our fault, our tools have evolved a lot. I still have my grandfather’s manual typewriter and my dad’s IBM Selectric but I write on a laptop with word processing software. Now we’re expected to make the software we write with work for book publishing, too. It may be time for an upgrade, as now there are better tools for writing and publishing. This segment covers desktop tools you can use for writing and publishing. (The next segment covers writing and publishing tools in the cloud.) Here’s what you’ll learn today:
• • • • • • • • •
Friday, July 18, 14
Why Ebook first? The tools: all of them! Microsoft Word. Love it. Hate it. Book Design Templates to the rescue! Apple Pages, OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Scrivener. My very favorite writing tool. Blurb for highly-formatted color books. Calibre and Sigil. Just a little too geeky. Adobe InDesign. For professionals only.
A NOTE ON THE LINKS Some of the links in this document are affiliate links, which means I earn a small percentage of sales if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. I want to assure you that I would never, ever recommend a tool or service that I do not use and love. I not only use these products, I love love love them and I’ve also had great feedback from other authors who love them, too.
Why ebook first?
I recommend creating your ebook first for a number of reasons. Most importantly because simple ebooks don’t require a lot of formatting, you can easily make changes, and they are very shareable. Why does “shareable” matter? Because, ideally, as you write your book you are also building your author platform. A great way to build platform is to share your writing with potential beta readers on social sites like Wattpad and Scribd. Really committed beta readers, aka “fans,” can help you with the developmental editing part of the writing and editing process, too. We love fans! You can also share your stories as an incentive to sign up for your email newsletter. Actually, this is your single most important goal in marketing yourself as an author: to get readers to sign up for your email newsletter. I suggest MailChimp because it’s easy, and free for up to 2000 subscribers. Social sharing does not require ebook creation. Most of the time you merely need to paste text into a field in the browser. But it’s great to offer an ebook or booklet on your website. We’ll address social publishing, marketing, promotion and author platform later. For now, let’s focus on book-building tools for the desktop.
Friday, July 18, 14
e tools: all of them!
You may not have heard much about some of these word processing and ebook creation tools but I hope you’ll consider using at least one of them besides Microsoft Word. Think of these tools as a vehicle for your journey. You can take a car, a bus, a train, plane, bicycle, motorcycle or your own two feet. Some are simple, some have lots of gears and controls. Here we go.
Friday, July 18, 14
Microsoft Word. Love it. Hate it!
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Microsoft Word You could use any text editor to write, but most authors use Microsoft Word and
Microsoft Word Book Design Templates
hopefully you’re using Microsoft Word Styles. Using styles is key to creating and
Apple Pages
formatting a good clean ebook, not only in Word but in most of the other document
OpenOffice
creation tools, too. I strongly suggest that you do a web search for Microsoft Word
NeoOffice Scrivener
Styles and learn to use them. It’s fairly easy and it I guarantee you’ll save a lot of time
Blurb
and energy in document and book formatting.
Calibre Sigil
I must say that while Word isn’t really the best tool for writing and exporting books it
InDesign
is an important one. It was built way back in the beginnings of desktop publishing with the single purpose of getting a document from your computer to the printer. As it has evolved, Microsoft’s programmers have modified the code to offer advanced features. This has unfortunately resulted in a lot of weird symbols being inserted in web pages (you’ve seen them!) and in ebooks. The word processing software I describe in the next pages outputs cleaner code.
Friday, July 18, 14
Book Design Templates to the rescue! The Love Triangle of Ebook Creation and Distribution EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Many publishing tools are built on Microsoft Word because it’s so popular. Smashwords and
Microsoft Word
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) are two important tools.
Book Design Templates Apple Pages
Smashwords is an ebook aggregator - which means they distribute your ebooks for you in
OpenOffice
their store and to the online ebook retailers (plus app stores and libraries). KDP is Amazon’s
NeoOffice
publishing tool used to upload your book to sell in the Amazon Kindle store. There are other
Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
ebook aggregators but Smashwords and Amazon KDP is the most popular pairing for Do-ItYourselfers. (Amazon KDP is just a tool to get your Kindle book in the store.) Think of Smashwords, Amazon KDP and Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates as the love triangle for ebook authors. When you create an ebook using one of Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates it is automagically formatted to the liking of of both Smashwords and Amazon KDP. So create, upload and sell. Did I mention that his cover design templates and print book templates are great, too? And that they work with other ebook and print book services? They’ll save you a lot of time.
Friday, July 18, 14
Apple Pages, OpenOffice and NeoOffice.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
I’ll explain more about ebook aggregators and distribution in a later document, but for now, let’s get back to ebook creation tools.
Microsoft Word Book Design Templates
Apple Pages
Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb
A lot of Apple users like Pages instead of Word. It’s got most of the features you see in Word but exports cleaner code. Pages uses styles too, and again, it’s in your best interest to learn how to use them.
Calibre Sigil InDesign
OpenOffice and NeoOffice OpenOffice is the open-source alternative to Microsoft Word and does a much better job of exporting clean ebook formats. NeoOffice is the improved version of OpenOffice for the Mac operating system. They’re both free, donation-funded word-processing programs. And yes, they both also use styles!
Friday, July 18, 14
Scrivener. My very favorite writing tool.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Scrivener
Microsoft Word
Scrivener is an awesome alternative to any of the usual word processing programs
Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
and in fact it’s my very favorite desktop tool. This is not only a desktop writing and organization tool but it has an amazing feature set that can help you develop stories and books. And guess what? It uses “styles,” too. Scrivener can export your book (or just a segment) into print and ebook formats, doc format for Word and the other word processing programs, and a selection of other formats. Scrivener is definitely worth the $45 (free 30-day trial) and the learning curve. I use Scrivener to write almost everything now.
Friday, July 18, 14
Blurb for highly-formatted color books.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP Microsoft Word Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice
Blurb If you’re creating a full-color book or a book with lots of formatting, you’ll definitely want to check out Blurb’s easy-to-use tools for making ebooks and print books. Just choose a template and insert images and words. If you’re a pro designer or photographer, take a look at Blurb’s plugins for InDesign and LightRoom.
Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
I recommend Blurb’s BookWright tool most often because it builds a fixed-format EPUB version and a print version concurrently. This is a huge timesaver for authors of highly-formatted color books. Blurb also provides templates for trade paperback and other wordy books, but their strength is high-quality color books and so their POD printing costs are high. You can sell your book in Blurb’s online store and they also offer distribution to a growing distribution network.
Friday, July 18, 14
Calibre and Sigil. Just a little too geeky.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP Microsoft Word Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice
Calibre and Sigil I wasn’t going to mention Calibre and Silgil because they’re a little geeky for the average self-publishing author they appear in search engines so often I thought you might want to know something about them.
NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre
Calibre is an open source ebook creation tool that exports your book to all the ebook formats. Sigil simply creates EPUBs.
Sigil InDesign
I also want to mention that it’s possible to create a MOBI (for Kindle) from an EPUB with other tools, including an online tool called EPUB2MOBI, but the end result might not look very good. Actually, these days, it’s a better practice to create Kindle Format 8 (KF8) files instead of MOBIs so it looks good on all Kindle devices including the Kindle Fire tablet..
Friday, July 18, 14
InDesign. For professionals only.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Adobe InDesign
Microsoft Word
Adobe InDesign is a book design application and the de-facto standard used by
Book Design Templates
professional book designers. It’s expensive, difficult to learn, and extremely flexible,
Apple Pages
giving the designer ultimate control over ebook and print book design, even
OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
multimedia. Self-publishers like me had to learn InDesign before all the easy-to-use solutions were developed. InDesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite, which also includes PhotoShop, Illustrator, and other applications pro designers are trained to use. If you have a serious budget for your book and want a real pro to design it for you, make sure the designer is using the latest version of InDesign. That’s it! But that’s not all. There are some pretty awesome cloud-based tools you need to know about before you make your final decision.
Friday, July 18, 14
What you’ve learned.
Here’s what you’ve learned in this segment:
•
10 important desktop tools that allow you to create ebooks.
•
“Styles” in Microsoft Word and their importance in document and ebook creation. (Also in Pages, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Scrivener, and others.)
•
A really great combination for ebook creation and distribution is the “love triangle” of Smashwords, Amazon KDP and Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates.
•
Scrivener is a superior desktop writing and book creation tool for its outlining, organization, story development and export capabilities.
•
Blurb has some of the best desktop tools for creating complex, full-color ebooks, with their BookWright tool in particular great for creating ebook and print book formats concurrently.
•
Whether you do it yourself or hire it out, I hope you are now well-versed in the linguafranca of desktop tools that help you to create ebooks.
Friday, July 18, 14
Intensify your learning
Intensify your learning with Virtual Self-Pub Boot Camp. I’ve run this program in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few years and now it’s gone virtual! I’m offering recordings of the sessions from not just one, but two recent workshops featuring experts from all walks of the self-publishing industry. It costs only $99 for over 10 hours of learning with bonus presentations, plus access to membership in an online community that offers even more information and training. That’s like getting a crack team of personal self-publishing consultants for less than $10 an hour! The program includes audio-video presentations that you can watch or listen to on your mobile device, plus pdf slidesets, all downloaded to your desktop to watch, listen, read anytime, anyplace. Here are some of the experts you’ll hear from. Got questions? Please contact me.
What people are saying...
Friday, July 18, 14
Following Carla King's advice is the smartest thing you can do as an indie author because it will save you a boatload of grief and money. She looks closely at the latest, greatest shiny objects in the path of authors to determine if they will help or hinder their success. I trust her indisputable, good judgment and so should you". - Robin Cutler, Manager of IngramSpark
anks for joining me! Your loyal guide, Carla King Next: Ebook creation tools in the cloud
Over land and sea and all the strange creatures that be I pledge to be your loyal guide in your indie author journey. Please sign up for e Indie Author Journey news so I can let you know when there’s more of Mapping Out Your Self-Publishing Adventure, and other information you’ll find useful on your journey. A heartfelt thanks for allowing me to guide your adventure! click to email
Friday, July 18, 14
1
Friday, July 18, 14
EBOOK CREATION TOOLS ON THE DESKTOP
Ebook creation tools on the desktop.
This segment of Mapping Out Your Self-Publishing Journey is all about ebook creation tools on the desktop. I like to start with ebooks first because they’re so easy, and besides, a lot of the ebook creation tools can create print book formats, too. These tools can be split into two categories: desktop tools and cloud-based tools. Today we’re focusing on desktop tools. Let’s explore!
Friday, July 18, 14
What you’ll learn.
A carpenter wouldn’t hammer with a wrench, or saw a board with a nail file. Yet writers often do not use the right tools for the job. It’s really not our fault, our tools have evolved a lot. I still have my grandfather’s manual typewriter and my dad’s IBM Selectric but I write on a laptop with word processing software. Now we’re expected to make the software we write with work for book publishing, too. It may be time for an upgrade, as now there are better tools for writing and publishing. This segment covers desktop tools you can use for writing and publishing. (The next segment covers writing and publishing tools in the cloud.) Here’s what you’ll learn today:
• • • • • • • • •
Friday, July 18, 14
Why Ebook first? The tools: all of them! Microsoft Word. Love it. Hate it. Book Design Templates to the rescue! Apple Pages, OpenOffice and NeoOffice. Scrivener. My very favorite writing tool. Blurb for highly-formatted color books. Calibre and Sigil. Just a little too geeky. Adobe InDesign. For professionals only.
A NOTE ON THE LINKS Some of the links in this document are affiliate links, which means I earn a small percentage of sales if you make a purchase after clicking on my link. I want to assure you that I would never, ever recommend a tool or service that I do not use and love. I not only use these products, I love love love them and I’ve also had great feedback from other authors who love them, too.
Why ebook first?
I recommend creating your ebook first for a number of reasons. Most importantly because simple ebooks don’t require a lot of formatting, you can easily make changes, and they are very shareable. Why does “shareable” matter? Because, ideally, as you write your book you are also building your author platform. A great way to build platform is to share your writing with potential beta readers on social sites like Wattpad and Scribd. Really committed beta readers, aka “fans,” can help you with the developmental editing part of the writing and editing process, too. We love fans! You can also share your stories as an incentive to sign up for your email newsletter. Actually, this is your single most important goal in marketing yourself as an author: to get readers to sign up for your email newsletter. I suggest MailChimp because it’s easy, and free for up to 2000 subscribers. Social sharing does not require ebook creation. Most of the time you merely need to paste text into a field in the browser. But it’s great to offer an ebook or booklet on your website. We’ll address social publishing, marketing, promotion and author platform later. For now, let’s focus on book-building tools for the desktop.
Friday, July 18, 14
e tools: all of them!
You may not have heard much about some of these word processing and ebook creation tools but I hope you’ll consider using at least one of them besides Microsoft Word. Think of these tools as a vehicle for your journey. You can take a car, a bus, a train, plane, bicycle, motorcycle or your own two feet. Some are simple, some have lots of gears and controls. Here we go.
Friday, July 18, 14
Microsoft Word. Love it. Hate it!
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Microsoft Word You could use any text editor to write, but most authors use Microsoft Word and
Microsoft Word Book Design Templates
hopefully you’re using Microsoft Word Styles. Using styles is key to creating and
Apple Pages
formatting a good clean ebook, not only in Word but in most of the other document
OpenOffice
creation tools, too. I strongly suggest that you do a web search for Microsoft Word
NeoOffice Scrivener
Styles and learn to use them. It’s fairly easy and it I guarantee you’ll save a lot of time
Blurb
and energy in document and book formatting.
Calibre Sigil
I must say that while Word isn’t really the best tool for writing and exporting books it
InDesign
is an important one. It was built way back in the beginnings of desktop publishing with the single purpose of getting a document from your computer to the printer. As it has evolved, Microsoft’s programmers have modified the code to offer advanced features. This has unfortunately resulted in a lot of weird symbols being inserted in web pages (you’ve seen them!) and in ebooks. The word processing software I describe in the next pages outputs cleaner code.
Friday, July 18, 14
Book Design Templates to the rescue! The Love Triangle of Ebook Creation and Distribution EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Many publishing tools are built on Microsoft Word because it’s so popular. Smashwords and
Microsoft Word
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) are two important tools.
Book Design Templates Apple Pages
Smashwords is an ebook aggregator - which means they distribute your ebooks for you in
OpenOffice
their store and to the online ebook retailers (plus app stores and libraries). KDP is Amazon’s
NeoOffice
publishing tool used to upload your book to sell in the Amazon Kindle store. There are other
Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
ebook aggregators but Smashwords and Amazon KDP is the most popular pairing for Do-ItYourselfers. (Amazon KDP is just a tool to get your Kindle book in the store.) Think of Smashwords, Amazon KDP and Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates as the love triangle for ebook authors. When you create an ebook using one of Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates it is automagically formatted to the liking of of both Smashwords and Amazon KDP. So create, upload and sell. Did I mention that his cover design templates and print book templates are great, too? And that they work with other ebook and print book services? They’ll save you a lot of time.
Friday, July 18, 14
Apple Pages, OpenOffice and NeoOffice.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
I’ll explain more about ebook aggregators and distribution in a later document, but for now, let’s get back to ebook creation tools.
Microsoft Word Book Design Templates
Apple Pages
Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb
A lot of Apple users like Pages instead of Word. It’s got most of the features you see in Word but exports cleaner code. Pages uses styles too, and again, it’s in your best interest to learn how to use them.
Calibre Sigil InDesign
OpenOffice and NeoOffice OpenOffice is the open-source alternative to Microsoft Word and does a much better job of exporting clean ebook formats. NeoOffice is the improved version of OpenOffice for the Mac operating system. They’re both free, donation-funded word-processing programs. And yes, they both also use styles!
Friday, July 18, 14
Scrivener. My very favorite writing tool.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Scrivener
Microsoft Word
Scrivener is an awesome alternative to any of the usual word processing programs
Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
and in fact it’s my very favorite desktop tool. This is not only a desktop writing and organization tool but it has an amazing feature set that can help you develop stories and books. And guess what? It uses “styles,” too. Scrivener can export your book (or just a segment) into print and ebook formats, doc format for Word and the other word processing programs, and a selection of other formats. Scrivener is definitely worth the $45 (free 30-day trial) and the learning curve. I use Scrivener to write almost everything now.
Friday, July 18, 14
Blurb for highly-formatted color books.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP Microsoft Word Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice NeoOffice
Blurb If you’re creating a full-color book or a book with lots of formatting, you’ll definitely want to check out Blurb’s easy-to-use tools for making ebooks and print books. Just choose a template and insert images and words. If you’re a pro designer or photographer, take a look at Blurb’s plugins for InDesign and LightRoom.
Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
I recommend Blurb’s BookWright tool most often because it builds a fixed-format EPUB version and a print version concurrently. This is a huge timesaver for authors of highly-formatted color books. Blurb also provides templates for trade paperback and other wordy books, but their strength is high-quality color books and so their POD printing costs are high. You can sell your book in Blurb’s online store and they also offer distribution to a growing distribution network.
Friday, July 18, 14
Calibre and Sigil. Just a little too geeky.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP Microsoft Word Book Design Templates Apple Pages OpenOffice
Calibre and Sigil I wasn’t going to mention Calibre and Silgil because they’re a little geeky for the average self-publishing author they appear in search engines so often I thought you might want to know something about them.
NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre
Calibre is an open source ebook creation tool that exports your book to all the ebook formats. Sigil simply creates EPUBs.
Sigil InDesign
I also want to mention that it’s possible to create a MOBI (for Kindle) from an EPUB with other tools, including an online tool called EPUB2MOBI, but the end result might not look very good. Actually, these days, it’s a better practice to create Kindle Format 8 (KF8) files instead of MOBIs so it looks good on all Kindle devices including the Kindle Fire tablet..
Friday, July 18, 14
InDesign. For professionals only.
EBOOK CREATION ON THE DESKTOP
Adobe InDesign
Microsoft Word
Adobe InDesign is a book design application and the de-facto standard used by
Book Design Templates
professional book designers. It’s expensive, difficult to learn, and extremely flexible,
Apple Pages
giving the designer ultimate control over ebook and print book design, even
OpenOffice NeoOffice Scrivener Blurb Calibre Sigil InDesign
multimedia. Self-publishers like me had to learn InDesign before all the easy-to-use solutions were developed. InDesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite, which also includes PhotoShop, Illustrator, and other applications pro designers are trained to use. If you have a serious budget for your book and want a real pro to design it for you, make sure the designer is using the latest version of InDesign. That’s it! But that’s not all. There are some pretty awesome cloud-based tools you need to know about before you make your final decision.
Friday, July 18, 14
What you’ve learned.
Here’s what you’ve learned in this segment:
•
10 important desktop tools that allow you to create ebooks.
•
“Styles” in Microsoft Word and their importance in document and ebook creation. (Also in Pages, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Scrivener, and others.)
•
A really great combination for ebook creation and distribution is the “love triangle” of Smashwords, Amazon KDP and Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates.
•
Scrivener is a superior desktop writing and book creation tool for its outlining, organization, story development and export capabilities.
•
Blurb has some of the best desktop tools for creating complex, full-color ebooks, with their BookWright tool in particular great for creating ebook and print book formats concurrently.
•
Whether you do it yourself or hire it out, I hope you are now well-versed in the linguafranca of desktop tools that help you to create ebooks.
Friday, July 18, 14
Intensify your learning
Intensify your learning with Virtual Self-Pub Boot Camp. I’ve run this program in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few years and now it’s gone virtual! I’m offering recordings of the sessions from not just one, but two recent workshops featuring experts from all walks of the self-publishing industry. It costs only $99 for over 10 hours of learning with bonus presentations, plus access to membership in an online community that offers even more information and training. That’s like getting a crack team of personal self-publishing consultants for less than $10 an hour! The program includes audio-video presentations that you can watch or listen to on your mobile device, plus pdf slidesets, all downloaded to your desktop to watch, listen, read anytime, anyplace. Here are some of the experts you’ll hear from. Got questions? Please contact me.
What people are saying...
Friday, July 18, 14
Following Carla King's advice is the smartest thing you can do as an indie author because it will save you a boatload of grief and money. She looks closely at the latest, greatest shiny objects in the path of authors to determine if they will help or hinder their success. I trust her indisputable, good judgment and so should you". - Robin Cutler, Manager of IngramSpark
anks for joining me! Your loyal guide, Carla King Next: Ebook creation tools in the cloud
Over land and sea and all the strange creatures that be I pledge to be your loyal guide in your indie author journey. Please sign up for e Indie Author Journey news so I can let you know when there’s more of Mapping Out Your Self-Publishing Adventure, and other information you’ll find useful on your journey. A heartfelt thanks for allowing me to guide your adventure! click to email
Friday, July 18, 14
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